"I want cold calls," says man previously annoyed by telemarketers.

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A British man fed up with cold calls from telemarketers set up a premium phone number in November 2011 and has made £300 by accepting calls and keeping the annoying marketers on the line as long as possible.

Lee Beaumont, who works at home in Leeds, UK, was getting calls at all times of the day. "I thought there must be a way to make money off these phone calls," he told the BBC. He searched on Google and found a small company that charged him £10 (about $15.50) to set up an 0871 line (equivalent to a 900 line in the US), which forces people who call him to pay 10p per minute. Of that, he receives 7p (about 10.9¢).

Beaumont is honest with companies who ask him why he has an 0871 number, telling them he's annoyed by marketing calls and would rather make money if he has to receive them. He used to receive 20 to 30 cold calls a month, but he only got 13 last month, a trend he doesn't necessarily like since it reduces his payments.

For what it's worth, the organization that regulates premium numbers told the BBC that "Premium rate numbers are not designed to be used in this way and we would strongly discourage any listeners from adopting this idea, as they will be liable under our code for any breaches and subsequent fines that result."

Still, we have to admire Beaumont's entrepreneurial streak, and his sense of humor.

people who call him to pay 10p per minute. Of that, he receives 7p (about 10.9¢).

That's only.. what? $6.54 per hour? I know I value my personal time way more than that.. now for $5 or $10 / minute I might be interested but I bet you would get a bunch of chargebacks when the bills arrived. Most call centers probably have toll numbers blocked anyway.

I'm in the US and occasionally sell mid century modern furniture and tools on Craigslist. I will sometimes post my number in the copy of the ad, albeit obfuscated, and there are people out there who are paid to scrape ads and get any numbers listed and sell them to marketing companies.

Since it is a cell phone and I'm on the do not call list, I record each call and send it to a consumer rights attorney who then figures out who owns the number and puts them on a list.

It doesn't cost me a thing. For repeat offenders (people who call after they get the equiv. of a C&D) it costs them monumental amounts of money.

For what it's worth, the organization that regulates premium numbers told the BBC that "Premium rate numbers are not designed to be used in this way and we would strongly discourage any listeners from adopting this idea, as they will be liable under our code for any breaches and subsequent fines that result."

Huh??? I'd like to know the rules that are broken by doing this...

I thought the same thing when I read it on the BBC news site. Or rather more specifically; if he wasn't telling people that he's doing this, then it's not really possible to argue that he's breaking any kind of obvious rule as he works from home, so using a premium number for receiving calls (that could be service related) isn't wrong. Keeping them on the line as long as possible may be the more likely part to break a rule as it's misleading and intentionally costing them money (and the actual telemarketing staff may not know any better).

The distinction I suppose is that he doesn't offer any kind of specific phone service related to the number, but is simply giving it out, however premium phone numbers are fairly well known, and many phone networks now warn you if you're going to be connecting to one.

More interesting though is the possibility that it might encourage the cold callers to start filtering premium numbers out of their lists, in which case buying a premium phone line could be a very viable way to block them for good, and any that do call anyway can help pay for it.

This is a really disheartening attitude, made worse by the voting show most people seem to agree.

Whether you like something or not is irrelevant. He is not disclosing the cost of the call unless specifically asked, which is (as I understand from other comments) not legal in the UK, as it is most certainly not in the US.

The fact that people think, "Well I don't like this person/company/organization so it is okay" is exactly the kind of double standards we should work to eliminate. If something is bad, it is bad. It isn't a matter of the party performing the action that makes it bad.

I agree entirely. I was a bit surprised by the reaction to my initial post (I've never had a post downvoted to the point of being hidden, it's kind of exciting) but it would appear that there is no greater appeal than that of the baser urges of many posters here who simply want to "stick it to the man". This site is normally more level-headed than that but I realize these are comment threads and not the forums, things do get a little crazy sometimes.

Eh, no skin off my nose either way. I see this as a slapfight between two varieties of dickhead and I have no dog in the hunt. Maybe we'll see a follow-up on this in a month or so, I am actually interested to see how this turns out for him.

Now if he just had an automated bot that answered the phone and kept the telemarketer on for a long time so that he could automate the revenue earning process...

Years ago I went to a lecture by David Carson, he was talking about a project he was working on with William Burroughs. So he placed a call to William Burroughs using the number given to him. (he did find it strange that somebody would hand out Burrough's home number so readily, but he took it) He then encountered a remarkable phone tree that he navigated, at first the questions made perfect sense, like "to schedule a book signing press 5", "to speak with Mr. Burrough's agent press 12", etc. Then the questions started to get more detailed, and eventually they got a bit crazy, "Please enter your shoe size."

Anyway Carson had spent about 40 minutes going thru this maze of questions, when finally a recording came on that said something like, "In case you haven't figured it out by now, I don't plan on taking your call, thanks for trying." click.

Preach it, brother. 7p a minute isn't worth it when I could be doing other things.

And he's going to (should) pay tax on that.

Why do you assume he's not doing other things? I spend so much time on conference calls for work that if I weren't doing other things, I'd go nuts. And who said his motivation is to make money? It's more likely his motivation is to "stick it to The Man." And he's doing an exceedingly good job at that.

Preach it, brother. 7p a minute isn't worth it when I could be doing other things.

And he's going to (should) pay tax on that.

Why do you assume he's not doing other things? I spend so much time on conference calls for work that if I weren't doing other things, I'd go nuts. And who said his motivation is to make money? It's more likely his motivation is to "stick it to The Man." And he's doing an exceedingly good job at that.

I disagree - the equivalent of 40p a day is not 'sticking it to the man' in any impressive way.

They're paying $.15 a minute to talk to him. They're paying a worker the same, plus they're paying for their own line, plus they're paying for a building to sit the workers in, plus people to come up with scripts, etc, etc.

I'm sure they dislike it, because it's a cost. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's essentially still worth it to the telemarketers.

How could it possibly be worth it if the person has no intention of buying anything?

This is swell and all but I'm pretty sure he's going to run afoul of disclosure rules for these types of numbers. If he never tells anyone they'll be charged for calling him eventually someone is going to take issue with it and do something about it.

I'm surprised the provider has allowed him to keep the number now that he's made it clear he's using it to ambush people. I see nothing heroic in countering dickery with a different kind of dickery.

He isn't hiding the fact that this is a toll prefix. Don't they have a responsibility to look at the numbers they call?

Not sure I'd even call it a responsibility, I'd call it common sense: "I called a 1-900 number, and it cost me money!"If someone can't be bothered to pay attention to what is, and is not a toll number, I'm fairly certain no one else can be bothered to listen when they complain about the bill.

This is a really disheartening attitude, made worse by the voting show most people seem to agree.

Whether you like something or not is irrelevant. He is not disclosing the cost of the call unless specifically asked, which is (as I understand from other comments) not legal in the UK, as it is most certainly not in the US.

The fact that people think, "Well I don't like this person/company/organization so it is okay" is exactly the kind of double standards we should work to eliminate. If something is bad, it is bad. It isn't a matter of the party performing the action that makes it bad.

I can speak only for myself, but the reasons why I applaud the actions described in the article are twofold.

- As I said in another post, I find that marketing call is a very deep and important problem in today's society. It hides some very dirty things with relation to personal data trading (which is illegal in my country but done anyway), sometimes it borders on harassment and a large proportion of the callers are scammers. I know some people who had to change their phone number to get some peace and quiet in their own home in the evening.

- It's the action of a single guy. He makes very little money out of it, it probably won't last, so I can allow myself to ignore his little "scam" to focus on the way he tricks people who orchestrate those calls. If somehow it became bigger, I would probably have a different reaction.

I don't know about the UK, but in Germany premium numbers need to have a message at the beginning of the call announcing the actual cost. That message itself still has to be free so that you could hang up again without having to pay.

This is a really disheartening attitude, made worse by the voting show most people seem to agree.

Whether you like something or not is irrelevant. He is not disclosing the cost of the call unless specifically asked, which is (as I understand from other comments) not legal in the UK, as it is most certainly not in the US.

The fact that people think, "Well I don't like this person/company/organization so it is okay" is exactly the kind of double standards we should work to eliminate. If something is bad, it is bad. It isn't a matter of the party performing the action that makes it bad.

I can speak only for myself, but the reasons why I applaud the actions described in the article are twofold.

- As I said in another post, I find that marketing call is a very deep and important problem in today's society. It hides some very dirty things with relation to personal data trading (which is illegal in my country but done anyway), sometimes it borders on harassment and a large proportion of the callers are scammers. I know some people who had to change their phone number to get some peace and quiet in their own home in the evening.

- It's the action of a single guy. He makes very little money out of it, it probably won't last, so I can allow myself to ignore his little "scam" to focus on the way he tricks people who orchestrate those calls. If somehow it became bigger, I would probably have a different reaction.

There are legal and proper channels if people are calling you and your number is on the do not call list, at least in the US. I would imagine other countries have very similar laws, you just need to look them up.

He has been doing it for years, I'm curious as to why you think it won't last.

Like I said, it boils down to one face. You don't like marketing calls, so you justify it by saying it is okay to do whatever you want to those companies.

There are legal and proper channels if people are calling you and your number is on the do not call list, at least in the US. I would imagine other countries have very similar laws, you just need to look them up.

He has been doing it for years, I'm curious as to why you think it won't last.

Like I said, it boils down to one face. You don't like marketing calls, so you justify it by saying it is okay to do whatever you want to those companies.

There are legal channels in my country too, but they are mostly ineffective. There's too much money involved for all parties (except for the end-user, target of the calls) for anything to change. I've tried asking the callers for their company number and reporting them, I've subscribed to government-sanctioned measures to protect end-users and monitor phone-related abuses, to no avail. Once your phone number is compromised and is traded back and forth under the hood by dubious companies, it's a lost cause.

I only got results when I moved to a new place, which implied a new phone number, which has been protected from the start (but how long will it last?) And I heard similar stories from people in other countries, I don't feel that mine is much different in this regard.

So, I agree with you in principle, but in this specific case, maybe you're blowing it out of proportion. It's a small thing, let's get some good laugh out of it.

087* number in the UK isn't exactly 1900 level cost, there are more expensive 900 service in the UK too, the 087 numbers just charge everybody who calls it a 'national (long distance) rate' regardless of their location, and people calling the number can't deduct it from the minutes in their phone's service plan.

It is common practice for business to have 087number for their call centre, there's no stigma like 900 numbers and even banks or mobile phone companies have their call centre using 087number, meaning they actually is making a small amount of money everytime a customer call them.

but there are sites like http://www.saynoto0870.com/ that will try to find the 'real' number that these 087numbers forward to, which can cost the callers less if they live nearby to the business or have included minutes in their phone contract.

I've had VOIP providers in the UK that can give me 087 numbers for free, taking money from people the call me, and if I were to get a 'real' number it would cost me more,

It's actually kind of funny that this has actually been put into practice, as I had been interested in the possibility of setting up a personal 900 number for this very use though had not known how to go about doing so or its feasibility. Though as the article and the service points out, these numbers are not meant to be used in this fashion.

And my metadata was not meant to be stored in an NSA database. If a telephone company has issue with my use of their 900 #'s, then they can come talk to me about how they are going to stop giving data to the NSA without a warrant and then we can talk about disconnecting my 900 number.

I'm very tempted to try a variation on his idea. E.g., purchase a 900 number & a new number through a VoIP service, then set the VoIP number to forward all calls to the 900 number. Then, I'd add the new VoIP number to my website's contact page, making it fairly hard to find to reduce the risk of legitimate customers calling that number - then use Javascript to obfuscate the real contact numbers in the HTML code, with the forwarding number in the clear.

That way, anyone with a legitimate reason to contact me can easily find the regular number - and on the contact page, I'd make it very clear that there's a cost for calling the VoIP forwarding number. But people who rely on bots to scrape websites to look for contact info will get the forwarding number instead, redirecting their call to the toll number.

I don't see that as "scamming" them in any way - rather, it's taking advantage of the fact that they're using borderline-scam tactics/the same sleazy tactics as EMail spammers, and using that against them.

I'm very tempted to try a variation on his idea. E.g., purchase a 900 number & a new number through a VoIP service, then set the VoIP number to forward all calls to the 900 number. Then, I'd add the new VoIP number to my website's contact page, making it fairly hard to find to reduce the risk of legitimate customers calling that number - then use Javascript to obfuscate the real contact numbers in the HTML code, with the forwarding number in the clear.

That way, anyone with a legitimate reason to contact me can easily find the regular number - and on the contact page, I'd make it very clear that there's a cost for calling the VoIP forwarding number. But people who rely on bots to scrape websites to look for contact info will get the forwarding number instead, redirecting their call to the toll number.

I don't see that as "scamming" them in any way - rather, it's taking advantage of the fact that they're using borderline-scam tactics/the same sleazy tactics as EMail spammers, and using that against them.

I don't think that would work. If you're forwarding the calls to the 900 number, your VoIP number will be billed for the 900 charges, not the caller.

I'm very tempted to try a variation on his idea. E.g., purchase a 900 number & a new number through a VoIP service, then set the VoIP number to forward all calls to the 900 number. Then, I'd add the new VoIP number to my website's contact page, making it fairly hard to find to reduce the risk of legitimate customers calling that number - then use Javascript to obfuscate the real contact numbers in the HTML code, with the forwarding number in the clear.

That way, anyone with a legitimate reason to contact me can easily find the regular number - and on the contact page, I'd make it very clear that there's a cost for calling the VoIP forwarding number. But people who rely on bots to scrape websites to look for contact info will get the forwarding number instead, redirecting their call to the toll number.

I don't see that as "scamming" them in any way - rather, it's taking advantage of the fact that they're using borderline-scam tactics/the same sleazy tactics as EMail spammers, and using that against them.

I don't think that would work. If you're forwarding the calls to the 900 number, your VoIP number will be billed for the 900 charges, not the caller.

Yeah, I'd have to do some testing first. I have my cell phone set to forward to my landline if the cell's off or out of service, and I know Rogers bills me for the full duration of the forwarded call (rather than just handing it off). Though I'm using Vonage & I'm not sure if their forwarding works the same way - or their call transfer feature.

For what it's worth, the organization that regulates premium numbers told the BBC that "Premium rate numbers are not designed to be used in this way and we would strongly discourage any listeners from adopting this idea, as they will be liable under our code for any breaches and subsequent fines that result."

Huh??? I'd like to know the rules that are broken by doing this...

It hurts their business with the cold-call/telemarketing sphere. (They're selling services to the cold-callers, too).

For what it's worth, the organization that regulates premium numbers told the BBC that "Premium rate numbers are not designed to be used in this way and we would strongly discourage any listeners from adopting this idea, as they will be liable under our code for any breaches and subsequent fines that result."

Huh??? I'd like to know the rules that are broken by doing this...

From what I recall the issue is that you have to tell people that your number is a premium number when you tell people to call you on it. He could potentially get into trouble if he intentionally fishes for telemarketers to call him.

If I read the article correctly: He wasn't advertising that number or inviting calls -- he was just relying on the telemarketers "scraping" his number from twitter, etc.

He isn't hiding the fact that this is a toll prefix. Don't they have a responsibility to look at the numbers they call?

You don't think that despite the obvious prefix that there are no rules governing the disclosure of fees levied for using the number? 1-900 numbers in the US work the same way, even though everyone knows they charge the caller they are still required to disclose this when advertising the number. Most of them also publish the rate charged as well.

Also, this guy is actively trying to get people to call him so he can make money from them. You seriously don't see any kind of problem with that?

Nope. I don't. I despise cold calling. Anyone who practices that type of business is a scum in my book, just like spammers, and anyone who takes advantage of them gets thumbs up from me, even if he entraps them.

This is a really disheartening attitude, made worse by the voting show most people seem to agree.

Whether you like something or not is irrelevant. He is not disclosing the cost of the call unless specifically asked, which is (as I understand from other comments) not legal in the UK, as it is most certainly not in the US.

The fact that people think, "Well I don't like this person/company/organization so it is okay" is exactly the kind of double standards we should work to eliminate. If something is bad, it is bad. It isn't a matter of the party performing the action that makes it bad.

Read the article. That entire block of numbers is reserved for premium numbers. An organization that's in the business of working with telephones should have no trouble recognizing a premium prefix.

I read it. However that doesn't excuse companies from having to disclose the cost of the number, why should it excuse a private citizen?

What if instead of telemarketers he was giving his number to charities and talking to them with no intention of donating, charging them money without informing them of the cost? Would it still be okay?

He's not advertising the number, or pretending it's some free service. He's just letting it be discoverable by the sorts of marketers who scrape the web and twitter for phone numbers to hassle "cold call" -- it's entirely on the cold-caller's head, if they take it on themselves to take it upon themselves to intrude on someone whom they have no relationship with, even though they've not been invited to call.

For what it's worth, the organization that regulates premium numbers told the BBC that "Premium rate numbers are not designed to be used in this way and we would strongly discourage any listeners from adopting this idea, as they will be liable under our code for any breaches and subsequent fines that result."

Huh??? I'd like to know the rules that are broken by doing this...

In the UK, operators of premium rate phone lines are required to disclose the cost along with the number (so include "calls cost £1 per minute from BT landlines" smallprint at the bottom of a print ad, for example). This guy has said he only discloses the cost of phoning the number if the person on the other end of the line specifically asks him why he has an 0871 number - i.e. he doesn't proactively tell people - so he's breaking the rules.

Keep in mind, the provider gets a cut of everything this guy makes. That's going to reduce their incentive to stop him. It's more likely to be a regulatory body or court case (and why waste the money on that) that would bring a stop to this.